Software Review

This was my first novel by Rudy Rucker. Though I wasn't sure what to expect, I knew that this book would take a different approach to cyberpunk than I have encountered before.

Our main character is Cobb Anderson, he is an elderly scientist that is living in disgrace. The cause of his disgrace is the robot revolution that was brought about by him developing a way for robots to evolve and have real brains, not in the physical sense but in the independent thought sense. He has lost is his money and career, left his wife, and is suicidal while being terrified of death. Another consequence of the robot rebellion is that all the "boppers", or thinking robots, have been exiled to the moon. One of the boppers sneaks down to Earth and offers Cobb immortality, money for a ticket to the moon, and a new passport as Cobb's travel is restricted to due his part in the robot rebellion (albeit unintentional).

Cobb has a nemesis, a police officer named Mooney. Mooney is holding a grudge about Cobb's part in the robot rebellion. Ironically, the person that the boppers plan to have help Cobb is Mooney's son, Sta-Hi. I don't want to go into the plot any further, so that I avoid spoilers.

Rucker's writing flowed smoothly, and I even laughed in a few spots. The book was enjoyable, but not riveting. I think that part of the reason I wasn't riveted is because I found some of the events a bit predictible, that might not be the case for you. I wouldn't place it among my all-time favorites; however, I found the question that Rucker posed about the soul very interesting. There was a lack of intensity that I have come to expect from cyberpunk. As the novel is the first in a trilogy, much of the story was exposition. I don't feel that I can reach a definitive conclusion on how I feel about it as a work, because it is not a complete work in and of itself. If you like science fiction and questions of an existential nature, then this would be a good choice for you.

Hardwired Review

Welcome to Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams' world of super corporations, hard-wired skills, and smugglers. This is an extremely fast-paced, classic cyberpunk novel.

The opening of the book gets your heart racing. We meet Cowboy, our protagonist, as he is driving his car to his mountain hideaway. It does great job of introducing the feel, the hero, and the technology of the story. Cowboy is a panzerboy, THE panzerboy actually. A panzerboy is a smuggler, a bootlegger, and a line-runner. He smuggles to maintain his freedom from the control of the Orbitals, corporations that run the world and maintain their head quarters in orbit around Earth. His approach reminds me very much of what in America was referred to as the "frontier spirit".

Our other main character is Sarah, Sarah is a person for hire. She has a modification called a Weasel, it is very dangerous to those she uses it on and herself. Sarah's goal is to buy tickets for herself and her brother to live in Orbit. She has held some very borderline jobs in order to achieve this. In fact, when we first meet her, she is on a job to assassinate one of the Orbital employees and steal some information from their database. This results in her home being blown up and her brother being seriously injured.

Her fixer, or agent, for the lack of a better word is put in danger as well. Cowboy and Sarah meet on the job related to finding out who is trying to kill her. Both Cowboy and Sarah have strong senses of integrity, despite the fact that they hold what is in our world criminal jobs. They discover that the black market is not all that it seems.

This story contains much complexity in the plot and character development. The details come together wonderfully, though occasionally there is a slight feeling of deus ex machina. I would say that for most people this is an excellent introductory novel to the cyberpunk sub-genre. It is much more accessible than Neuromancer by Gibson for those brand new to the genre. It contains less "techno-babble" at any rate.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

This is my second read through of Snow Crash, this year. This time I chose to listen to the audio book, due to my very busy schedule. It was read by Jonathan Davis, who did an excellent job. Expressive tones, unique voices for all the characters (even Y.T.), etc. I originally read this on a recommendation of a friend, and shortly after I began playing around on Second Life, which I discovered was inspired by the novel. In fact, I read it a second time so soon, because of my book talk group on Second Life. I admit it, I love the idea that the entire internet could be an entirely visual world.

The main character in our tale is Hero Protagonist(I've always been curious about this choice of name, but feel it's a bit too obvious to get analytical about.). He is a computer hacker/pizza delivery boy. Freelance hacking is an unstable income, and he got into debt with the mob, so now he delivers pizzas for them(all pizza places are owned by the mob). He meets our other main character, Y.T. is a courier. She delivers packages, messages, etc. on her skate board. All deliveries are made this way, the poon (harpoon) cars to help them get the delivery made faster. In fact, this is how Hero and Y.T. meet, she poons his pizza delivery car, and then delivers the pizza on time after he crashes the car into a pool.

We also meet Mr. Enzo, the head of the Mafia, and Mr. Lee, the head of the Chinese nation. Nations are more like corporations than the nations we are familiar with these days, they recruit people from all backgrounds and are not in a centralized location. David is also introduced to us, one of the lead hackers, an inventor of the Metaverse, and a good friend of Hero's. Juanita is another of our group of heroes, she is a hacker as well and programmed all the facial expressions in the Metaverse (which are now considered crucial to any business dealing there).

This is a story about a computer virus/drug that is called Snow Crash. Hero is offered a hypercard, a representation of a file in the Metaverse, with Snow Crash on it. He turns it down, as he does not know the person offering it and accepting it would be opening his computer to possible viral infection. David, on the other hand, takes the card. He opens it with Hero there, at first nothing happens, then his system crashes. Hero doesn't really think anything of it, other than that David should have known better. Turns out that it not only crashed David's computer, but his brain too. He is in the hospital, thanks to Juanita's actions, but unresponsive, only occasionally talking in tongues. The plot continues to gain complexity as the various threads tie together. It this intrigues you, I encourage you to read the novel for yourself.

Snow Crash touches on such themes as linguistics, religion, programming, psychology, and viral information. Stephenson shows a fairly good grasp of religious history, though he embellishes as well. The characters are engaging, the story is fast paced. Stephenson even gives you a few laughs along the way without disrupting the intense feeling of the book, a very difficult thing to do. This book is an excellent example of well written science fiction and cyberpunk.

Neuromancer Review

Neuromancer was written in 1984 by William Gibson, his first novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. His prior projects were short stories, including one co-authored with Bruce Sterling. It is known as the most famous early cyberpunk novel and for winning the three top sci-fi awards.

The hero of the piece is Henry Case, a hustler who was once a hacker of some skill. He has been on a suicide mission since his ability to run in cyberspace was burned out of his head after his bosses discovered he had been skimming funds. He is approached by Molly, a Razor Girl (a.k.a. a bodyguard), on behalf of a man named Armitage. They offer to reverse the damage done to his neural pathways and pay him to hack into a system for them. They fix his neural pathway damage, but plant an enzyme that will restore the damage unless they are satisfied with his work. Molly and Case become close and start investigating Armitage. The group later acquires Peter Riveria, an artist/con-man, to also assist in their heist. Riveria is also a sociopath, who they find while he is in the middle of a gruesome act. They are dealing with an AI, artificial intelligence. This is very dangerous for hackers. They tend to end up brain dead, sometimes briefly, most often permanently.

Gibson starts out very strong with this novel, it has an intense feeling. It heralds back to the days of pulp fiction in pacing and mood. However, in the third quarter of the book, though it was still enjoyable, it seemed to lose some of its momentum. This is probably not unusual in a first novel when the author has previously written short stories. The ending also felt a little forced, and yet at the same time hollow. I’m sure this has to do with the fact that it is the beginning of a trilogy. I found the characters compelling and fairly complex, including the AI. Gibson employs many allusions in his work, and has an expansive imagination. I’d like to read more of his work and see how he grows as he becomes more comfortable with the novel format and length.